Lufa Farms basket - Sept. 20, 2016

[eveglass]

Week two of my Lufa Farms baskets! Let's see what we got, shall we?




Here are some thoughts about it...

• Potted basil ($4.00) -- A surprisingly large plant! I accidentally ripped off two of the larger stems when I was carrying it home, so those became part of snacks and an interesting tea for this evening. It's quite tasty and I'm glad I bought it. Unlike my attempt to grow an herb garden last year, I'm just gonna keep snipping leaves until it's all gone, probably within the next week or so. I imagine I can get a fair amout of garnish or maybe a tiny bit of pesto out of it.
• Not so perfect rainbow carrots ($2.75) -- Mostly carrots that were snapped in half, which means they're not great visually but they worked fine once they were chopped up and roasted. I discovered that the yellow ones cook faster than the orange ones, and also I had my oven too hot for the first tray and burnt it a bit (oops), but otherwise these are perfectly serviceable carrots.
• Veggie pâté ($5.00) -- This was my "treat" this week, and it's... fine. It's a good veggie pâté, but there's nothing special about it. I can't say I like it any more than the $3.50 one at the supermarket, which is a shame because the reviews were hyping it as the best veggie pâté EVAR, and it's not. Alas.
• Granola (free sample, the non-sample version would be $4.50 for 250g) -- Tasty! Chunky, the way I like my granola, with a nice crunch. Not sure it would be worth the full price, but definitely a nice little sample.
• Blue plums ($3.90) -- It's hard to tell, but there are about eight plums in there. I tried one after dinner -- very tasty! They're on the cusp of being over-ripe, but I suspect we'll eat them all before they actually get to that point.
• Cherry tomatoes ($5.00) -- Excellent just like last week, but I'm still not sure whether a single pint is worth $5.00
• Not pretty but quite tasty ($3.00) -- This week's haul included a bag of endives of which about half were useable (worth about $1.00), a red pepper that was soft but fine for crudités ($2.75), a very ripe melon that'll be okay in smoothies but not for straight eating ($2.50), a bundle of sage of which about 2/3 is useable ($2.75), an artichoke with some serious browning but that's still edible ($2.40), and about seven tiny peppers that I think are habanero ($3.50). Not sure what I'm gonna do with that last one, but even so, an excellent value yet again!

I spent about an hour and a half in the kitchen and accomplished the following:

• Looked up how to use artichoke, endives, and habanero
• Properly put away the sage
• Cut up the melon -- discovered it was soft but it might be okay in smoothies
• Cut up the red pepper into strips
• Trimmed and steamed the artichoke
• Prepped and roasted the carrots
• Sautéd the endives with some pre-made mirepoix
• Did dishes and took down the garbage (we've been having a problem with fruit flies, so I didn't want to give them a playground of a garbage bag full of food scraps)

All said and done, here's what it looked like after all that prep and cooking:




Some more "meta" thoughts:
My big issue as I was prepping my order this week is that everything at Lufa is expensive. There's no way to get around that. I spent some time with the "online groceries" site of a local big-name supermarket, comparing the Lufa prices both both to the price of a "regular" (read: cheap) version that I would normally get, and also to the price of a more comparable item (organic, local, etc.). The trend was clear. I expected Lufa to be more expensive than the cheapie versions, but they were generally even more expensive than the "fancy" version. Sometimes as much as 50% more. And compared to the "cheap" version, sometimes as much as 2-3 times what I'd pay at the grocery store.

Which isn't to say Lufa has nothing going for it. There are other rankings of value beyond price. Here are a few positives:

• It shifts the moment of decision to home, and over a few days -- Instead of standing in a grocery store, surrounded by choice, already hungry and worrying about what I'm gonna get, Lufa has the benefit of allowing me to ponder in private over my computer screen, and for several days. By the time I actually leave my house, I've already made all my decisions.
• Reviews -- Once you're a member of Lufa, you can see the user reviews of the various products, which is especially useful when it comes to produce. There aren't that many ratings yet, and it doesn't completely eliminate the unplesant surprises (see: last week's spring mix and microgreens), but it does help.
• Accountability -- My basket is delivered on Tuesday. If I don't pick it up, it'll go to waste. And once I have it, I might as well cook it and put it to use. So I can use my "cold brain" to make the decisions that my "hot brain" has to live with. It forces me to eat more veggies, which is a good thing. (I may still be eating out for lunches, but baby steps are still steps.)
• Supporting local businesses and farmers -- About half the stuff in my basket this week came from Lufa, and half came from local businesses. I like the idea of supporting local businesses.
• Not pretty but tasty package -- By far the best value for two weeks running: about $12-15 worth of edible produce for $3.00. That's not the sort of deal you're gonna get in a supermarket, even with half-off "must be sold quickly" sales.

Those are all good things, and the reason I signed up for a second week's basket. But the crux of the matter is quality vs. price. The quality has been... variable. Some stuff has been excellent, some has been merely okay, some has been disappointing. And when you're talking about a 30-300% markup over what you'd get in a supermarket, disappointing is just not good enough. (In fairness, customer service is extremely responsive and quick to give refunds for anything sub-par, and I'm still getting used to what I really want.)

But even when something is excellent, the question is whether it's excellent enough to warrant the surcharge. The veggie pâté was nice, but is it worth 50% more than the equally-nice veggie pâté from the supermarket? The granola is tasty, but is it worth twice as much as the Harvest Crunch cereal that serves us just as well as a topping for our yogurt? In both cases, probably not. I haven't tried any of the meat to be able to tell the difference. As for the produce... I'm still taking it on a case-by-case basis. This is probably an issue I'll be struggling with for at least a few more weeks.

Anyway, it's now 10:45 and time for me to start thinking about bed. See you all next week! Or sooner!